Opponents gather support to fight assisted suicide ballot question

Thursday

Oct 11, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 11, 2012 at 11:10 AM

With three statewide polls showing strong support for a ballot question that would make Massachusetts only the third state in the nation that specifically allows some terminally ill people to obtain a prescription for life-ending drugs, a well-funded opposition is striking back.

Chris Burrell

With three statewide polls showing strong support for a ballot question that would make Massachusetts only the third state in the nation that specifically allows some terminally ill people to obtain a prescription for life-ending drugs, a well-funded opposition is striking back.

Arguing that the measure is poorly written, lacks safeguards and ignores advances in palliative care for the dying, the main opposition group is gathering support from associations of physicians, nurses, hospice workers and people with disabilities.

“I really believe it’s a flawed document,” said Rosanne Meade, a former teacher and union leader from Boston who volunteered to head up the main group fighting the referendum, the Committee Against Physician Assisted Suicide. “You have to be told you have only six months to live, but I have yet to meet a physician who can do that with any accuracy.”

Three polls conducted in the last month all predict decisive voter support for the measure from Suffolk University and the Boston Globe finding more than 60 percent of voters in favor to Public Policy Polling measuring 58 percent in support.

If voters back the question in November, it would become law in January, allowing physicians to prescribe a lethal dose of barbiturates to an adult patient with a terminal disease diagnosis offering less than six months to live.

Meade is eager to educate voters about what the ballot measure is lacking.

“You take people at a point where they are the most vulnerable. This does not require any counseling at any point,” she said. “And 50 to 70 percent of people who receive a (terminal) diagnosis become clinically depressed.”

Central to Meade’s criticism is that people with terminal illnesses could opt for suicide when they haven’t been informed about palliative care and hospice.

The proposed law is modeled on one that Oregon voters passed in 1997 and Washington followed in 2008.

Last year in Oregon, 114 people requested the lethal prescription and 71 ingested the drugs, according to the state’s department of public health. Over 14 years since the law was enacted, physicians have written 935 prescriptions, and 596 patients have taken their own lives.

Three years of data from Washington shows 255 prescriptions and 241 suicides. In both states, the majority of the people taking advantage of the law were white, well-educated and diagnosed with cancer.

Earlier this year, Vermont legislators voted down a similar assisted-suicide proposal. Maine voters in 2000 narrowly defeated a similar measure by a margin of about 17,000 votes, or two percent of 647,000 cast.

Meade is hoping that Massachusetts voters see the ballot question oversimplifies issues around death and dying.

“We’re dealing with a very complicated life and death issue,” she said. “When you deal with it as a ballot question, you just ship it off to a bumper sticker.”